Double Glazing On The Web

Are A-rated double glazed windows really the way to go, or are double glazing retailers simply taking advantage of our childhood conditioning? Surely A is always better than C because it comes earlier in the alphabet…?

Funny, but when you stop and think about it, choosing double glazing isn’t an exam. Mine is not necessary better than yours because it ‘scores’ higher. Well perhaps on paper it means something and if the letter A is very important to you, then A-rated windows are most certainly out there to buy.

Personally however, there is more to my purchasing decision than the boxes a product ticks on an industry checklist – I have to weigh that against the other crucial list in my life: my bank balance.

Browsing through statistics I came across an interesting set of figures. Money saved through installing new energy efficient, A-rated double glazed windows, on your average 3-bed semi, over 20years is roughly – wait for it… £8,300.00 Wow – impressive! BUT the savings on the same property, over the same 20 years, with C-rated double glazed windows is £7,700.00.

If I’ve got this right, and believe me I’m no mathematician, that’s a saving difference, over a 20 year period, of just £30 a year, approximately £600 in total. Given that I’m unlikely to be staying in my property for the full 20 years, probably more like five, if the cost to upgrade from A to C is more than £150 total, than I’m afraid my bank balance wins out and I’d go for C over A any day!

With the big freeze still bearing down upon us, for many without double glazed windows it can’t help to learn that up to 50% of the heat in our homes is lost through our windows and that’s while the windows are closed! This equates roughly to £135 per year for an average household, or for the environmentally conscious, that’s around 720kg of CO2.

It’s no wonder then that as the cold weather continues, across the country there has been a noticeable increase in double glazing enquiries for new double glazed windows. Similarly there’s been a dramatic rise in interest in new boilers…strange that. The trouble is that doubled glazed windows, just like boilers and water tanks, don’t rate highly on many of our ‘things we would like’ lists – it’s not until they shoot to the top of the ‘things I really must get’ list that we actually do something about it.

It’s a shame because although few people start to shop around for boilers or double glazing in August when the weather’s nice, that’s likely to be the time when the best bargains are to be found. Leave it till the heating’s broken or your energy bills are the equivalent to burning £5 notes for warmth and it’s guaranteed that every engineer and double glazing fitter in the country will be rushed off their feet!